The Worst F1 Teams in History

A new team in Formula One gives the opportunity for new chapters to be written in history. Some good, some bad. Gene Haas’ new Formula One team seems to be well resourced and logged a good amount of laps in pre-season testing, and looks set to at least be a competitive unit throughout the 2016 season.

Thankfully, that means that they won’t be following the lead of some of the worst Formula One teams we’ve ever seen. Read on, and shake your head at just how rubbish these teams were…

EuroBrun

A race team which isn’t anywhere near as bad as some of the others on this list, yet appears for the fact that there were some irregularities during their three year stay in Formula One.

It didn’t seem all that bad when the team was formed – an amalgamation of sorts between the Euroracing team of Giampaolo Pavanello, who was also in charge of Alfa Romeo between 1982 and 1985, and the Brun racing team managed by slot machine specialist Walter Brun. The initial car, the ER188, had a naturally-aspirated 3.5 litre Cosworth slotted in the back, and had signed recent Formula 3000 champion Stefano Modena to partner Argentinean driver Oscar Larrauri.

As soon as money ran out, the problems began, however. Both drivers were forced out of a few races due to their failure to pre-qualify. Euroracing lost interest, and Larrauri was forced out of the team for Christian Danner – only for Danner failing to fit inside the car, meaning Larrauri was reinstated!

From 1989 until EuroBrun’s withdrawal from the sport in 1990, despite utilising the services of Gregor Foitek, Larrauri, Roberto Moreno and Claudio Langes, they could only qualify on two occasions – Moreno, a driver far too talented for many of the machinery he had (you’ll read more about him later) miraculously qualifying 16th for the United States Grand Prix in 1990.

The team’s best finish during their “high” point was 11th in the 1988 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Coloni

Perhaps the least deserving team to have a spot in this line-up, Coloni are only there because of their dismal qualifying record – only 14 times in 82 races was a Coloni car able to make the grid.

More than anything else though, Coloni’s efforts showed that you could have a well-organised team who know what they are doing with the car, as well as a decent driving line-up, but can’t really go anywhere without cash resources. And in the midst of a worldwide crash at the time, Coloni realistically had no chance.

Not through a lack of trying though. The likes of Gabriele Tarquini, Nicola Larini and – that man again, Roberto Moreno – were drivers at Coloni, and Tarquini even managed a top 10 for the team at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Unfortunately, the team suffered a major setback, even though their 1990 season started in good intentions. Subaru, or more specifically Fuji Heavy Industries, took over the team, and held a 51% share, developing a unique flat-12 for their car. A similar variant was previously tested in a Minardi, and had a significant lack of power – something which also befell Coloni. It was said that the engine was only good for 500hp, which was only faster than the Life cars (which you’ll read about below).

Coloni was sold off at the end of 1991. Points for effort, but unfortunately it also lands them in the worst teams in Formula One history. There was to be, however, a very interesting post-script…

Mastercard-Lola

Before we get into that post-script though, let’s have a look at a more recent abject failure of a team to come into the sport, Lola.

Lola had a long history in Formula One racing before they decided to go it alone, providing chassis’ to teams for over 20 years – Larrousse the main customers in the sport – and developed a chassis’ in 1995 to be tested by Allan McNish. In 1996, team principal Eric Broadley announced that Lola would enter the sport, initially to begin participating in the 1998 season.

Just one problem. The sponsors that Lola had announced, mainly Mastercard, were pushing for the team to enter as soon as possible, so by the time the Melbourne Grand Prix rolled around, all the signs were there for an unmitigated disaster of major proportions. Instead of being able to develop their own V10 unit, the cars instead sported a Ford V8, which had been seen in the Forti team a year earlier. The car itself was even worse. Mostly based on an Indycar – just stripped apart and moulded into a Formula One car of sorts – it saw no wind-testing and little on-track testing.

All this despite the team declaring Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Rosset would qualify within the 107% qualifying time and would beat the equally new, and much more organised, Stewart Grand Prix team (who, you know, went on to become Jaguar, then Red Bull Racing, and would then win pretty much everything in their path – yeah, that Stewart Grand Prix team).

Unsurprisingly it was a disaster. Both cars were over 10 seconds off the pace, Rosset 11 seconds off pole and Sospiri 13 seconds away.

That was the last we saw of Lola – the team, as it turned out, incurred a staggering $10 million+ in debts, going into receivership weeks later, and almost spelling the end of its existence. All this in just a few short months of racing.

A comeback to the sport was attempted in 2009. That also failed.

Andrea Moda

This is the post-script to the Coloni story. And that post-script saw one of the worst organised teams in Grand Prix history, very much competing in a ‘battle-to-the-death’ style competition with Life Grand Prix as the worst team in Formula One history. Both of them almost deserve an article of their own – they were that bad.

Back to Andrea Moda. Staggeringly, owner Andrea Sassetti bought the Coloni team for $2 million! All that for perhaps a couple of chassis’, a trailer and a few parts. A bit of a false start then. Then comes perhaps the second most encouraging bit of the story – the team at least managed a deal with Simtek to run cars which had been designed for BMW in 1990. So at least the cars looked alright.

From there, it all fell in a heap. Let’s try sum this up as quickly as we possibly can. In South Africa, the team were excluded from all sessions for failing to pay the $100,000 new teams deposit – Sassetti unsuccessfully arguing he basically took over Coloni. In Mexico, the team had all their equipment, but were missing both their cars. Initial drivers Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia were annoyed, both were sacked.

That man again – Roberto Moreno (by now a real tough luck story) and future-Stig Perry McCarthy took over both drives. McCarthy was not granted a Superlicense in Brazil, but Moreno at least ran the car. In Spain, McCarthy was finally allowed to drive. He lasted four metres in pit lane before the engine expired – yep, that actually happened. By this time, Bertaggia came back, this time with $1 million of sponsorship. Sassetti was knocked back, with the FIA explaining that he used up his two allotted driver changes.

From here on in, the story gets ridiculous. Annoyed that Bertaggia could not replace McCarthy, Sassetti treated McCarthy in a manner which enraged the FIA. Mind you, the biggest miracle happened at Monaco.

Moreno actually qualified.

He lasted 11 laps before the engine cut out though, but hey, at least that was a step in the right direction, right? No. In Canada, the team arrived with everything except for their engines after a pay dispute with Judd – leaving Simtek to lease out a Brabham engine to Moreno – McCarthy missed out again. In France, a truck blockade saw the teams forced to use back-roads to make it to the Magny-Cours circuit. Surprise, surprise, Andrea Moda did not, and got caught up, missing the Grand Prix.

In Great Britain – McCarthy’s home race, he was sent out on wet tyres on a completely bone dry track. And then in Hungary, McCarthy was sent out of the track with 45 seconds to go in pre-qualifying – making it impossible for the Brit to at least try to qualify. At this point, the team were told to run McCarthy properly, otherwise they would be kicked out of the sport.

Things looked good when Brabham withdrew, meaning that Andrea Moda would be able to participate in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix. But this would also prove to be this team’s swansong. Moreno was called into the pits with flexing suspension – unperturbed, the team fitted the same suspension to McCarthy’s car and sent him out. Unsurprisingly, the suspension broke – it just so happened that it broke going into the most fearsome part of the Spa track – Eau Rouge.

Approaching the team following this incident, McCarthy asked why the suspension was broken. The team replied that they knew of the flexing suspension and fitted it to the car anyway. For the good of the sport, Sassetti was arrested that same weekend for fraud, and the team were finally banned from the sport altogether.

Life

But oh boy. If ever there was a team who at the very least gave Andrea Moda a challenger for the worst team ever, Life was it.

Life’s sole plan was to develop an engine, put it in a car, and let the world know how good their technology was. Sounds like a lot of other teams right? Ferrari? Mercedes? Right? RIGHT? Except Life, run by Ernesto Vita (his last name means Life in English), failed in the most spectacular way possible.

If you’re going to develop an engine which would be able to work in a car, surely the best way to go about it ISN’T to develop it by using a W-cylinder configuration, meaning that the car would be impacted by the height of the engine. But, hey, this is Life, and they decided this is the way Formula One should be.

Next up, the car itself. Now, surely, SURELY if you’re going to get a car, you get one which can fit a W12 engine. That wasn’t the case, and this story delivers in spades. Life bought a chassis from the failed FIRST Racing Team – the same chassis which failed plenty of crash tests before because the car was basically described by its own designer of a ticking time bomb. So much so, he even took legal action to ensure that his name wasn’t associated with the car. But that’s okay according to Life. Play on.

So the wonderfully set-up Life team were ready to put their car up the front. All 375 horsepower of it. You read that right. 375. The top teams only had 600-700 or somewhere around that mark. A few years ago some teams managed to get 1450 out of their car – BMW a good example once the boost went right up. But yeah, 375hp was more than enough according to Life.

The son of Jack Brabham, Gary, actually associated himself with this absolute joke of a lineup. Thankfully, only briefly. That was because his car lasted 400 metres in his second qualifying session – at least an improvement on what Perry McCarthy managed in the Andrea Moda, but still very much hilarious in the nature that the engineers didn’t put any oil in the car.

Oh yes, and that 375hp car? Staggeringly fast though. Once Brabham quit, Life lured Bruno Giacomelli out of retirement after a seven-year absence to help get the cars right up the front. Competitive, they were. At the San Marino Grand Prix, Giacomelli recorded an extraordinarily quick laptime of 7:16 at the lightspeed-like average of 22mph, the car stuck in third gear. In all seriousness, the lap was the slowest ever recorded on a circuit.

At least Life had a crack at fixing the problem though – later on, the team managed to obtain a Judd V8 with whatever resources they had. All looked good to finally trouble the Williams and McLaren powerhouses.

It’s just that the engine didn’t fit.

And even more staggeringly, Life said ‘bugger this’ and sent the car out. Where the engine cover flew off.

Unsurprisingly, that was the last we’d ever see of Life, to the relief of the likes of Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell who were worried of the car’s potential to get up the front.

Related Articles

motorsport

Some Things to Ponder Over during the Formula One Summer Break

August 15, 2017

With the Formula 1 season taking its deserved summer break to recharge the batteries, it gives them time to relax, and for Formula 1 fans to think about what lies ahead in the second half of the season. The 2017 season so far has been a marked improvement on recent seasons with a genuine title […]

2018 Australian F1 Grand Prix – The Good, Bad & Ugly

April 10, 2018

The 2018 F1 season got underway with Sebastian Vettel securing a somewhat fortuitous victory in Sunday’s Australian F1 Grand Prix. After Lewis Hamilton took pole the day before, and looked extremely comfortable in the early part of the race, it looked as if only the winning margin was going to be the question that needed […]

2017 Formula 1 Season Recap of Good, Bad and Ugly

December 22, 2017

The 2017 Formula 1 season has been done and dusted, with Lewis Hamilton wrapping up his fourth World Championship, and third in four years with Mercedes. In the end he did it easy, but was pushed for over half a season by Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari, but the Summer Break killed all the German’s […]

Should I Care About the 2018 Australian Grand Prix…An Alternative Preview

April 10, 2018

The F1 season is ready to roar with the 2018 Australian Grand Prix kicking off a marathon 2018 F1 season this weekend, and it is hard to contain the excitement. Having provided the Good, Bad and Ugly after each Grand Prix last year, this year it is time to double up with a preview as well, answering the question on […]

Alfa Romeo F1 Return with Sauber + Hopes for More Returns

December 1, 2017

Great news for the Sauber F1 Team during the week as the news of an Alfa Romeo F1 return with Sauber was confirmed, ending 2017 on a high in a season where the Swiss team finished dead last in the Constructor’s Championship with just 5 points. After the lows of the 2017 campaign, an introduction […]